Tag: writers

Featured Writing Exercises & Prompts Welcome to the Write Divas Featured Writing Exercises & Prompts! This week’s writing exercise involves description. In what unique way will you do the following: Write a scene where your character is describing snow to someone who’s never experienced it before. We hope you enjoy this feature and feel free to share the results of your hard work. ~...

Divas Recommend: So You Want To Make A Living Writing? 13 Great Truths by Bob Mayer If you’re a writer, I can only assume that—like me—you’ve sat at your desk and imagined the time when you could give up the day job and make writing a full-time job. Can you make a living as a writer? What should you do and where should you focus your energy? How...

What to Do With Your First Draft Congratulations! You’ve done something that most would-be writers have not—completed your novel. I can feel your satisfied grin from here. So now that you’ve finished that first draft, what should you do with it? If “Publish it now!” is your first thought, I want you to take a step away from your manuscript. In fact, you should...

The Right Write Tools …to get the job done! So you want to be a writer, or maybe you’ve already jumped onto the writing universe with both feet. Do you have the right tools? There are tons of books, pamphlets, white papers, blogs, and guides on how to be a better writer, how to write better characters, how to get an agent to notice your...

…and they lived happily ever after. Trite though it may sound, according to Romance Writers of America, a happy ending or “an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending” is one of only two requirements for a story to be classified under the Romance genre. In order to meet both requirements, the story must also revolve around the romantic relationship between the two main characters. The love...

The Divas Recommend: How to (Almost) Instantly Improve Your Writing by Candace Johnson Hello Diva followers! On this week’s The Divas Recommend, we bring you the fabulous blog Change It Up Editing, run by editor Candace Johnson. Change It Up Editing offers tips on writing and editing, but also on other aspects of your life as a writer, such as social media, self-publishing, networking, and more....

Brand Name Dropping Are name brands necessary in fiction? Everyday name brands like Coke and Kleenex have made their way into all kinds of fiction, and most readers don’t blink an eye when one appears. The focus for today is the more exclusive name brands and their use in fiction. Generally speaking, they’re not necessary. Of course, if the name brand is pivotal to your...

In Defense of the Semicolon If you’ve taken a creative writing class, read a how-to book on writing or been scolded by an editor, you’ve been told that semicolons do not belong in fiction writing. Perhaps a red pen has crossed through your semicolon, replacing it with a period and a capital letter, or maybe you’ve been told to rewrite and add a conjunction, instead....

There was a moment of silence in the literary world this week when Elmore Leonard passed away on August 20, 2013 at the age of eighty-seven. Well known for his clean, direct narrative, he listed his now famous “10 Rules of Writing” in an article written for The New York Times in 2001. As an editor, lists like this make me happy—especially number three. But...

This weekend, Diva Lauren and I had the pleasure of attending the Stamford Author Event—”a gathering of thirty-plus authors and bloggers for an afternoon of books, swag, and the chance to get the latest releases from favorite authors while discovering new voices.” We weren’t sure what to expect, but what we got was a room packed with the friendliest women—and men, too—all excited to talk...